Keeping things in the family

June 14, 2005

The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne Jr. thinks he has a grip on the next GOP presidential ticket.

McCain-Bush in 2008?

That would be John and Jeb, the most logical Republican ticket if the party remains in the polling doldrums. If President Bush and his political maestro, Karl Rove, decide that the only way to create a political legacy is to nod toward the Arizona senator with whom they have battled and feuded, they will go for the guy who can win.

This scenario was outlined to me recently by a shrewd and loyally Democratic political operative with personal ties to the McCain camp before Mark McKinnon, one of the president’s top media advisers, publicly confirmed that he would help a McCain presidential run if it materialized.

Personally, I don’t see this happening at all, but that’s not the point I wanted to make here.

Instead, part of me is hoping that Dionne is at least partially right because it would carry on an unhealthy trend the Republicans have used for over three decades.

I was born in 1973. In every presidential race in my lifetime, with no exceptions, the Republican ticket has featured someone with the last name Bush or Dole. (In fact, we go back just a little further, 13 of the last 14 GOP tickets have had someone with the last name Bush, Dole, or Nixon.) It’s amusing not only as a historical coincidence, but also as a sign that the Republican bench is so weak, the party keeps turning to the same familiar names every four years for their national tickets.

Forget McCain-Bush, I say the GOP doubles up on their recent trend and goes with Jeb and Liddy Dole next time around. Republicans 2008 — The Lineage Ticket.

June 14, 2005 at 10:58 am

I can’t see Rove supporting someone he doesn’t have any influence over. A McCain win would be the same as a loss for Rove, Inc.

That’s frightening. I think we’ve had all the Bushes I ever hope to see.

I’m hoping Hillary will win in ’08 and ’12, then Jeb in ’16 and ’20, so that my entire voting life will be Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton-Bush, and then maybe Chelsea will run just for consistency.

McCain-Bush is a bored journalist’s pipe dream. The Christian Right has never forgiven and will never forgive McCain for his criticism of them in 2000. Without their support it is very unlikely that McCain could win the nomination in 2008. If I were a betting man I would guess that George Allen will be the Republicans’ next presidential nominee, though he might ask Liddy Dole to run with him in order to preserve dynastic continuity.

If I were a betting man I would guess that George Allen will be the Republicans’ next presidential nominee, though he might ask Liddy Dole to run with him in order to preserve dynastic continuity.

But why not have Jeb as Allen’s running mate? That seems a lot more likely than Liddy Dole.

I think the real question raised by this article is why in the hell Marshall Wittman, who is quoted more often than anyone this side of Norman Ornstein, declined to go on the record for Dionne? I mean, is there anyone else who could possibly fit the description of “a shrewd and loyally Democratic political operative with personal ties to the McCain camp”?

Yeah, I remember reading history about a place where lineage was what kept leaders in power. Only they were called kings, not presidents.

…the only way to create a political legacy is to nod toward the Arizona senator…

If they think that, they’re obviously more out of touch than we already thought. But it would be just like them to try such a tack, even though the only real way to create a legacy is to do something they’d never consider: act in the best interests of the People. Nobody named Roosevelt has been elected to high office in decades, but that family name will be easily remembered far longer than Bush will (unless, of course, he manages to plunge us into WW3 or something equally horrible).

Ah! but you forget the Bush secret weapon: Jeb’s latino son, George P. Bush, who will run sometime before or after Chelsea, giving you yet one more Bush-Clinton go around.

We’re getting to the point of being this weird sci-fi world where two powerful families, one the force of good and one the force of evil (I won’t say which is which) battle it out for control of the universe like some kind of diaspora.

This is a subject Kevin Phillips took up in Wealth and Democracy, and then followed up with American Dynasty. I’ve read the first, but not the second.

From my own observation, it does seem that the Bushes believe in the divine right of their family to run the US. The Kennedys used to feel that way until a few of them actually lost elections. It would do both the country and the Bushes good to have some of them lose, too.

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